In a cellular network, such as one employing Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA), each cell employs a base station that communicates with user equipment, such as a cell phone, a laptop, or a PDA, that is actively located within its cell. Typically, the available downlink transmission resources are shared among multiple users, wherein each user gets scheduled on some time-frequency resources. Further, each scheduled user also might get data with different modulation & coding scheme, retransmission number and other transmission parameters. To enable the user equipment to determine the resources on which it is scheduled (if any) and the corresponding transmission parameters, the base station employs downlink control signaling. The design of control signaling should minimize the necessary overhead, while also ensuring that user elements in the cell can accurately and efficiently decode the control signal. Improvements in control channel signaling would prove beneficial in the art.